Sunday, March 27, 2011

Its been quite a few months since we started this group. It all happened in some random manner. I have few of my friends, international bloggers who have created the pages in facebook to gather around the bloggers and discuss things openly. It wasn’t long before the same thought clicked my mind about having a page in facebook where I could try to bring out the bloggers and writers from Bhutan together, and like most of the people around the world, Bhutan has also many people in facebook and of all, bloggers and writers in facebook is not a wrong thing to assume. Facebook made it easier lot.

And within a few days only, there were more than a hundred members. It was a quick century. And now we have more than 150 members comprising of writers, bloggers, poets, artists, journalists and many more who share one common interest.

We are three of us who moderate the group. Thanks to Leythro for accepting my proposal of helping me in moderating the group. And finally we have Jurmi Chowang Sir who has been so courteous enough to provide a column in The Journalist and print out any articles weekly from our group. So guys, if you buy The Journalist, please do not forget to check out the column under the name: BLOGYUL.

Our first and foremost idea is to clearly define the dimension of the blogosphere created by Bhutanese writers and bloggers. We would like to bring out all possible blogs we know about into a light so that everyone can try follow eachother and learn collectively. We do that by bringing out at least a blog on our page by calling it BLOG-OF-THE-DAY and further we have also POST-OF-THE-DAY where we bring out at least a post from our bloggers. We also bring out some articles by other international bloggers and call it as GuestPost-of-The-Day. Apart from that, we encourage our members to share their latest posts or even the best post that they think they have in their blog(s).

We have plans and dreams to make it bigger, and encouraging with time. And to make it happen, we need your contributions through actively if not at least making an effort to share your posts with us and encourage others through dropping on their blogs to keep some encouraging comments.

P.S: If you guys have any suggestions and ideas to make our group better and encouraging, please do share with us.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

This following story that you are going to read is taken from the book-Count your chickens before they hatch by Arindham Chaudhuri. I read this story pretty long time back when I was in middle school. So with same thought that this may have to do something with what can happen in anyone’s life, I bring out here. Please note, the story is retold in my own words.

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The story is about a crew member in a ship and his captain.

The ship had its rule of having one person, be it from a crew member or a captain, at the end of the day had to write a report on what has happened on a particular day of a the ship journey. The report included in explaining about days work, to any members on board’s unwelcome behaviors if any.

So one evening, it was a captain’s turn to fill in the report register on whole day’s activities and about a journey. One of the crew members had been drunk in one point of the evening, and captain wrote as happened while that crew member begged so much. He was ready to put up with any sort of punishment in the ship but didn’t want to make it on the report. He pleaded it will affect his career, and eventual promotions he may be privileged of. Despite, the strict captain wrote it clearly against latter’s name: HE WAS DRUNK TODAY.

After few days, it was the turn of the drunken crew to write a report. Against the captain’s name, he wrote, CAPTAIN WAS SOBER TODAY. Though crew member wrote truthfully, what it meant was something different. It meant, captain was drunk other days, but today he was sober. So next thing that follows is a captain, who never drinks, asks for forgiveness from a crew man and write off the report.

Long time back, I posted a story about a beggar and a king which had the similar moral. Time dictates who we are. One’s power and status is defined so much b the kind of situation one is in and kind of time it is. Life is so much like chess game. In a perfect situation, even a pawn can keep its check on a king.

Here, I bring you guys again a story which no one knows who wrote it. Its root is untraceable. But as usual, I thought, it would at least make you guys think about something very important aspect of things we do in life.

A man once paid a visit to a temple. The temple was not fully built; it had its statues, and altars all under construction. There was a sculptor outside the temple making a statue of a God. The site took him by a surprise when he saw a similar statue lying beside the sculptor.

"Do you need two statues of the same GOD?" He couldn’t hold his curiosity.

"No," said the sculptor without looking up, "We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage."

The gentleman looked at the idol and found no apparent damages. "Where is the damage?"

"There is a scratch on the nose of the idol," said the sculptor, still busy with his work.

"Where are you going to install the idol?"

The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high.

"If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is scratch on the nose?" the gentleman asked.

The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, "I will know it."

Don’t you think, “Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.” Ralph Marston, this quote is what’s the story is all about, that excellence is something that should come from within and reach at the end of the hands. It should begin with the pure heart and honest soul, and then we can reach at the skillful hands. But question is how many of us are really sincere and truthful? How many of us just do things for the sake of doing? Do we care about the happiness one gets doing something sincerely, well some may care, but how many? We don’t lower our heads if there is nothing that is worth down there on floor to pick up. Aren’t we too much concerned about getting something to sweeten one’s mouth at the end of everything we are asked to do or supposed to do?

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Just like some of the best stories full of morals and wisdom are written by so many anonymous wise men, this following story that I am going to tell you guys, falls under the same category (i am not sure, but i find it this way). The story however is rooted to being a famous Buddhist story of two monks and a woman. And it triggers some thoughts after we read it, I bet.

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﻿ There were these two monks who went on journey. Their journey met with a beautiful woman waiting to be helped put across the river. “Could two of you help me get to the other side of the river? You see, river is too rapid.”

Monks look at each other in bewilderment. As Buddhist monks, they have taken a sacred vow to not so much even touch a woman, let alone be tempted by the beauty of the woman. It should be understood that in ancient times, monks are frowned upon if they even touch opposite sex to an extent that they are forbidden to have any contact.

Suddenly, one of the monks, picked her up, carried her and dropped her at the other bank of the river while other monk stood in absolute bafflement. He couldn’t be more stunned than this act by his compatriot.

They continued their journey without speaking a word. An hour went by, two hours passed, three hours and finally the other monk couldn’t hold his curiosity.

“How could have done that? How could you have even touched her? How could you do something of a sort which is against the sacred vows of our practice?”

And the other monk replied, “Are you still carrying her? I thought we left her four hours ago?”

How many of us are still carrying so many thoughts along with us? Human beings can either entertain thoughts or discard them, but many still hold into it. Like other monk in the story, how many worries, negative thoughts, low energy, and pre-conditioned thoughts we carry within us? Life is precious to live without pretension and stern disciplines. What do you think? Do you guys also have thoughts like that of other monk dragging and wearing you down? If you do, it’s time to dump them and look for clean conscience and enjoy going ahead in life.

This beautiful life which we are living, no matter in how awful or cheerful way one is living, when traced down to its end, it disappears. It literally vanishes. Yeah, you just do not find yourself at the end of it. Just a boom, and whole thing crushes down to fall into nowhere. And we start living in memories of others, and some continue to live through what they do- be it a bad or good. As a Buddhist, it shouldn’t be complicated to comprehend how our lives are like those dews on the blades of grasses which evaporate as morning changes to the daylight. The metaphor is basis of all the sects and Buddhist scriptures. They are all over, right at the prayers of monks to the preaching of lamas, right at the Dzongkha text books of school children to the relics hidden as treasure in Buddhist stupas, around prayer wheels and inside Dungkhor Manis, and Gurmas of wandering hermit to the songs that which give the emotions to our wisdoms of Buddhism. In brief, life is all around us and it has always been. One may ignore, or just let it go for the very contemplation of living it without any preconditioned thoughts or advised disciplines, but life in one way or the other, always ends up being lived with certain rules which people politely call as principles. Our lives are very much cornered by such written norms and practiced ethics. On top of that, there are plenty of reasons for us to not to be able to live life freely but live busy, pretending it to be a life even though it is sometimes a mistake that we chose it for ourselves.

This post is not just an utter co-incidence triggered by despised dullness in life nor something that I do to keep my keenness in writing alive. This post is about how our lives are actually clinging on some slim thread which breaks at mere thump of natural catastrophes.

I am very much a sentimental human being. I can be easily influenced and easily be fooled. Instances are plenty in my diaries when I ended up being eyesore of ridicule and sheer hoax of my friends. Instances are in abundance in my books when I got easily moved to share the burden of circumstances. However, I caution you guys to not to attempt one, I am now extra cognizant about the reality that like a ocean that which is a very place of gems and corals can also be the home of perilous sea animals, this world of ours is also filled with many bad human beings. One can only be on the alert and prepare strong.

Sometimes, like all other predictions by Mayan prophecy which came true, i believe the doomsday prediction seems so near to true. There couldn’t be any better examples than swine flu around the world and tsunami in Japan. And of course, our Bhutan, known for eternal bliss due to peaceful geography and cheerful people, had also its share of unprecedented debacles. We have fallen many a times the victim to the nature and its act of god. World is going to end, it has been echoing through out the world lately. One with sober mind, and rational logic could defy it to be an unknown fact of why Mayan did not prepare a calendar beyond 2012, December, but there are also facts that because no one wants to die or some governing body do not tolerate such things to be known in universe, it still remains mysterious that which is to be feared.

Many things in life come exclusive of rehearsal. Its like already considered, and yet we do not seem to get a grain of idea on it. In what seemed like disbelief, Tsunami hit Japan. It gulfed off more than ten thousand souls, something a world have witnessed fewer times after World Wars. As if a mother earth is enraged, she does a clean flush of a certain world, something that no words can depict. The footages and photographs of causalities are too evil to be able to even sit and endure silently. It’s the height of vicious casualty and it is not so long before a cold chillness and shiver runs through your spine. There can be nothing that one can do than to feel exposed of such devastating doom laden.

Life is so vulnerable. The impermanence is only the permanent character of our lives. The things on which one lives his life has no value when it perishes living behind everything which one built as if one are going to live forever.

I am becoming more insane here going on describing things everyone know, and I think I should rather be celebrating my life before it ends.so my friends i end here with the message: Life is precious so let’s live it beautifully before it meets the awaited cruelty of life. Let’s make it fully adorned with so many happiness and joys before it ends up to an unquenched thirst of cunning world, so let’s live life while it lasts. Let’s celebrate it so that one lives no corners to harbor regret and pain.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

All the long, he followed the path not knowing where it leads and he still follows it.

Like a chessboard, with one move, a pawn being capable of throwing a big iron hammer on king’s throne leaves nothing more striking than to assume our lives in accentuation with it. There is surprise, and there are so many ‘next thing’ from the other. I was born with a big surprise to everyone, in a public bus. Only god knows at how many ends of curses and of course sweet words I would have been even before my parents could actually kiss me.

I heard from my late Grandpa so many times how I almost succumbed to death with no proper clothes and food. He carried me inside his big pocket (hemchung of Gho) while Grandma stood beside my ailing mother. And even before I could thank him for everything he did that which is worth more than my life, he passed away. Sometimes, I wish if only our life comes with for-seen moves.

You can sometimes give a check very early if there are any leaks at any spots. You give check in chess to make one’s game more vigilant and of course to conquer the king and eventually a game, but life gives a check that which is capable of changing your whole life for once and all, or sometimes some are not even fortunate enough to be able to get second chance.I almost had the end of my life when I toppled down the hill into the scratchy stream with a tractor. For a five year child, the tractor parked over the hilly road didn’t make any difference of fear or understanding of it being a killing machine if toyed with it. All that excited me was sitting on the driver’s couch and next thing that followed was a tractor moving without the driver down the hill with me still on the steering. My Dad jumped along with the tractor, and picked me up with a big wheel of tractor rotating over my head. I would have been killed, and my Dad would have been too. BUT GOD? I still remember how Grandpa who was inside the room reciting prayer came out shouting at the people gathered around the scene. I was too naïve to actually fit into the circumstances. The fear within me conquered fully, and I broke down along with my terrified parents.

Next thing that followed was me and my Dad being summoned in the court. I don’t remember anything from that scene, but all that I know is that I was relieved of any guilt.

Law stated I was too young to be convicted of causing accident and damage to other’s property, but the guilt still lingers within me. I can never be relieved of the fact that within five years of my birth, I have caused terrible problems to the people around me. It still scares me to think of it, and makes me terribly sad when I imagine what could I have probably been to my parents, to the owner of the vehicle and to my grandpa? I continued to shock the people around me. Terror barged into my parent’s life with me, but they survived, and were thankful to God for saving my life while I still question God for playing the game with my life of which only He knows the rules.

I was immediately taken to the village by Grandpa. But the life has its drama incomplete for that particular episode. I was admitted into a boarding school faraway from my Grandpa and I almost got drowned before I got sick for many weeks. Before I could bring the situation in my consciousness, I was once again with my parents. And in 1997, exactly three years after I left my Grandpa for my parent’s place, I landed up handicapped in a rotten carcass of bicycle. I jammed up myself into it with a broken hand. Whenever my Dad is not so sober or emotionally down, he always accuses me of being responsible for my own destruction of a precious life. I know he must be feeling responsible though for all these things in my life which makes me nothing less sad than making my parents feel responsible for something nasty I ended up doing or committing. God has designed my life in many ways he desired, and I don’t know HOW MANY MORE HE WANTS TO?

But however, amidst all these ups and downs, my life also had s many wonderful things. If I was all the source of sadness to my parents, I had also been in few occasions a source of happiness and pride for them and of course for my late Grandpa.

I thank God for that, but it doesn’t make me more a person who could take Him for granted. He’s capable of many surprises and moves.

And all that I can do is be a part of the drama and go on being a pawn in His game.

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